When a team destroys a Fort, they’ll now gain a Catapult in every 3rd Minion wave. NOTE: In order to keep early-game Catapults from being too devastating to defending teams, Catapult attack splash size, attack range, and damage/health will gradually increase as the game progresses.

Developer Comment: After listening to feedback, we have decided to pull back the laning Mercenary change outlined in our 2019 gameplay updates in order to give winning teams more opportunities to pull ahead.

Withering Fire (Q) Adjusted functionality: Pressing Q once fires 5 Withering Fire arrows at the closest enemy Mana cost increased from 0 to 25 Damage reduced from 48 to 39 Range increased from 6.25 to 8 Cooldown increased from 2 to 8 seconds Cooldown now restores all charges No longer gains charges on Minion kills Nearby Heroes takedowns now refresh the cooldown of this ability Fire rate reduced from .188 to .375 (50% slower) Withering Fire cannot be cast while a previous cast of Withering Fire is still firing

Shadow Dagger (W) Adjusted functionality: Shadow Dagger no longer spreads to nearby targets each time it does damage. Damage dealt by Sylvanas to the primary target of Shadow Dagger spreads its effect to all nearby enemies. Mana cost decreased from 75 to 50 Duration increased from 2 to 2.5 seconds Damage reduced from 37 to 29

Haunting Wave (E) Banshee travel speed increased by ~6%

Mind Control (R) Cooldown reduced from 60 to 50 seconds New functionality: After a .25 second cast, launch a missile that impacts the first enemy Hero in its path. Impacted Heroes are Silenced, Slowed by 30%, and forced to walk towards Sylvanas for 1.75 seconds.

Possession (Active) Moved from Level 7 Now requires 3 charges to be used on Catapults

Unstable Poison (W) Moved from Level 7 Damage increased from 116 to 130 Now triggers on enemy minions who are afflicted by Banshee’s Curse, Black Arrows, or Shadow Dagger Radius increased from 2 to 2.5

Level 7

Barbed Shot (Q) New functionality: Hitting the same enemy with 5 shots of Withering Fire causes the last shot to deal 350% bonus damage

Lost Soul (W) Moved from Level 4 Adjusted functionality: Reduce Shadow Dagger’s cooldown by 1.75 seconds each time Sylvanas uses a Basic Attack on an enemy Hero with 3 stacks of Banshee’s Curse.

Slam (W) Cast time increased from .25 to .313 Cooldown reduced from 8 to 6 seconds Range increased from 8 to 9.5 Mana cost reduced from 40 to 30 Added functionality: Now has an Inner area that deals 40% Bonus Damage and applies a 40% slow for 1.5 seconds

Devour (E) Ability Effects now occur at the start of the ability's cast, rather than at the end

Savor the Flavor (E) Moved from level 7 New Functionality: Casting Devour on a Hero restores an additional 10% of maximum Health and Mana over 5 seconds and permanently increases Stitches’ health regeneration by 1.

New Talent – Playtime! (W) Heroes hit by Slam reduce the cooldowns of Stitches's other Basic Abilities by .5 seconds. This cooldown reduction is increased to 2 seconds for Heroes that are hit by Slam's inner impact area.

New Talent – Chop Chop (W) Hitting a Hero with the inner area of Slam increases Stitches' Basic Attack Speed by 50% for 4 seconds.

New Talent: Serrated Edge (Q) Hooking an enemy Hero deals 5% of their max life as damage and decreases Hook’s cooldown by 4 seconds.

Level 7

Last bite (E) Removed

New Talent - Blight (Trait) Vile Gas heals for 33% of the damage it deals. Activate to apply Vile Gas to all nearby enemies and reduce their healing taken by 20% for 5 seconds. 40 second CD

Cannibalize (Passive) Moved from level 20 New functionality: Heroes hit by Basic Attacks and Slam’s inner area heal Stitches for 2% of his maximum health.

Tenderizer (Passive) New functionality: Basic Attacks slow the target by 25% for 2.5 seconds. If the target is afflicted with Slam’s Slow, refresh its duration.

Fixed an issue causing camera jumps and cursor resets when using drag scroll. Made a number of improvements to AI behavior.

Heroes, Abilities, and Talents

Brightwing: Fixed an issue preventing Brightwing from applying the Sticky Flare talent effect if it hit more than one target. Brightwing: Fixed an issue preventing Brightwing from applying the Hush! talent effect if it hit more than one target. Chromie: Dragon’s Breath’s warning splat will now display after the ability has been cast. Deckard: Fixed an issue causing Deckard’s portal to be visible in Fog of War when using Hearthstone. Leoric: Fixed an issue that allowed Drain Hope’s damage and healing to persist through time stop effects. Lunara: Fixed an issue preventing Lunara from playing a voice line when she died. Stukov: Fixed an issue causing Massive Shove to remove Weighted Pustule from its target.

User Interface

Fixed a number of tooltip issues and inaccuracies across the game. Fixed an issue causing Hero models to prevent players from pressing the Ready button in the queue screen. Fixed an issue causing grandmaster numbers of 3 digits to extend beyond portrait frames while in a party. Kel’Thuzad: Added a quick-cast option for Glacial Spike. Zul’jin: Added a quick-cast option for Amani Rage.

Stitches looks like fun to play, but I'm afraid that Sylv will be super OP combined with the merc camp changes. If she plays somewhat decent she has first pick/ ban potential just doing camps all day. Maybe there is even a comeback for one trick pony Samuro in this

Meh, I don't really like Sylvanas being thrown into the generic assassin pool with only a little bit of her former Black Arrow trait. I kinda liked the hybrid assassin/siege role and she felt more unique than she will after this. Might as well pick Raynor or Valla.

My other gripe is that her Withering Fire is painfully slow now. Having 5 shots each taking 0.375 seconds means it takes almost a full 2 seconds to deliver them all. That is really slow. I'm a bit more positive about her trying to stack this Banshee's Curse thing on enemies and dealing more damage but it kinda feels similar to how Lunara has to stack her poison or how Valla has to stack her own Hatred.

Her being good with mercenaries kinda plays into her lore and stuff but it does tie her to a lane if she wants to buff the mercenaries. Still, I'll wait and see how she plays before giving a final judgment.

On the other hand, I am interested in the new Stitches. A lot of the talents look interesting. Stitches with more movement speed and then unslowable at level 20 feels pretty scary.

Playing Terran is like flying down a MULE drop in a marine suit, firing a Gauss Rifle

All the pro players I have seen comment so far have been down on the XP changes. Lots of NA pros were playing custom games on PTR last night. Extreme example clip from Zaelia where one team has 45 kills and all their structures and the other has 5 and just their core and they are level 20 vs 21. But I also saw a pro custom game that ended at level 14 with a 3 level lead.

We wanted to take a moment to address some of the concerns from our community about the experience updates on PTR this week. As with all of our balance changes, the Heroes team spends months internally playtesting and iterating before bringing these changes to PTR for further feedback from our players. Now that PTR is live, our team has been hard at work monitoring the new 2019 experience updates and listening to feedback. Based on this feedback and data, the team is currently exploring making some revisions to the 2019 experience updates to include more incentives for taking Forts and Keeps. We are currently iterating on these changes internally and plan to release an update to the 2019 experience changes in next week’s patch. While we don’t have additional information to share about these changes just yet, know that we are listening and that your feedback is incredibly valuable.

Thank you to everyone who took the time to try out these changes on the PTR and provided feedback. Keep an eye out for more information next week.

I'm a QM hero so forgive my naivete... but was there even anything wrong with the current XP model?

"He's like a Kakuna with Flamestrike." - Artosis 25.7.2014 \\ "Sometimes you gotta' be manly to get out of the group stage, Reynad." -Artosis 17.10.2014 \\ “There goes your dream of a frivolous lawsuit with a brewing company.” – Tasteless 26.8.2015

HOTS is designed so that when you have early success, you get stronger. Earning a level advantage makes your heroes stronger, which in turn makes it more likely you will continue to win.

I think most MOBA players accept this as just the way the game plays, but some people see it as a balance issue. In most sports it's just skill that determines your chances in coming back from an early game deficit to win. In HOTS if one team gets level 10 first, and the other team has to give up a strong objective because of it, the objective can then further the level lead and from there it's often a game of hope you can soak and survive to 20 and win a team fight then. This generally works out because it means both early game and late game matter. There is a chance to come back for teams that are behind as well as a chance to end before late game if you are really dominating.

I think most players are fine with that, but Blizzard's goal appears to be to reduce the time when teams are on different talent tiers. In theory that means teams can contest more objectives and more action because of less talent tier advantages, but on the PTR patch this is not how it works out if both teams play optimally.

Losing a fort doesn't give the enemy team any immediate advantage and in fact the new weak catapults every 3rd wave are just enough to freeze the minion wave near your team's keep wall where you can AFK soak safely and the enemy team that that took the fort cannot. On the PTR patch, if you sent multiple heroes to take a fort and lost soak, then you could be up in structures and behind in level. So instead of more action it promotes playing super passive when you lose structures and gives no incentive to take the structures in the first place.

My point was that it seems pretty obvious that getting some combination of more hero kills/camps/forts/lane xp is how you get ahead in levels. It's up to the players to know when they are dealing with talent tier gaps. If your team is behind, figure out which combination (of xp gainers) you can best achieve and climb back into the same xp range as the opposing team.

I guess I'm saying it didn't seem like something that even needed changing in my eyes.

"He's like a Kakuna with Flamestrike." - Artosis 25.7.2014 \\ "Sometimes you gotta' be manly to get out of the group stage, Reynad." -Artosis 17.10.2014 \\ “There goes your dream of a frivolous lawsuit with a brewing company.” – Tasteless 26.8.2015

Toys Event Quest Roll dice, complete quests, and join “The Kid” on a board game adventure in the Nexus for awesome rewards!

Volskaya Foundry

Channeling to enter the Triglav Protector is no longer interrupted by damage. NOTE: This change has been live as of the week of November 19

Developer Comment: While not a bug, the interaction between Orphea’s Eternal Feast and the Triglav Protector was too strong and could negate an entire objective without any opportunities for counter-play attached to it. This also highlighted an inconsistency with the battleground where a team could spend all their resources winning the objective but find themselves unable to actually use it under certain circumstances so with this change, we’ve addressed both issues.

Experience Changes

Removed all Experience earned from destroying a Fort or Keep

Destroying a Fort or Keep will now provide your team with a stacking 20% increase in Passively-earned Experience NOTE: Towers of Doom is exempt from all Experience and Catapult changes.

Developer Comment: Thank you so much for all of the feedback regarding the 2019 Gameplay Updates. While there is still a lot of community speculation about the outcome of these changes, there has been a resounding amount of concern about the loss of Fort and Keep XP. We agree that the complete loss of XP from Forts and Keeps may reduce the incentive to kill them to unhealthy levels, especially at higher levels of play. In response, we have reintroduced XP to the structures in a way that will reward players for taking them early while granting a gradual increase in power instead of large bursts. This should reinforce our goal of making matches closer while also rewarding teams for destroying enemy structures as quick as possible.

After listening to feedback, we have decided to pull back the laning Mercenary change outlined in our 2019 gameplay updates in order to give winning teams more opportunities to pull ahead.

Unit Radii

The unit radius values for most Heroes has been reduced by 5-15%

Developer Comment: In an effort to improve visual clarity when many heroes are on-screen, we’ve updated the art for the Hero Ring displayed underneath heroes. To reinforce this effort, we’ve also done a pass on the Unit Radii for all heroes. We understand that these radius adjustments will have a minor but intended impact on landing and dodging abilities, and as a result, felt that the 2019 Gameplay Updates were the best time to make these changes.

On December 12 2018 23:59 karazax wrote:XP should be double what it was before for capturing mercs, except for ​Hanamura Temple and Volsksaya Foundry Item Camps and Towers of Doom has no changes at all.

Hmm.. nothing on official forums or elsewhere. Have to double check today. Couldn't really play a lot of games on the new patch yet

i'll give Brack credit for having the balls to put his name on this statement rather than hiding behind some middle managers.

in particular note this comment : " though the cadence will change. Ultimately, we’re setting up the game for long-term sustainability."

maybe someone can make a thread out of this. i don't know enough about HotS to give this Blizzard decision the context it deserves.

Apparently, some guy was lied to by Blizzard employees at Blizzcon about HGC. They may have said something incorrect, but I don't think they consciously lied. I think these Blizzard employees truly believed HGC would be going in 2019.

This is what happens when a new CEO is in charge.

Ray Kassar To David Crane : "you're no more important to Atari than the factory workers assembling the cartridges"

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